Think. Broken can the senate save itself and the country . And im just curious what is your conclusion to that question . Guest tom first of all im thrilled to have a conversation with you. When cspan told me that you were going to do it i felt like i had won the lottery, to see an old friend but also a great senator and Senate Leader and an author too on this subject. They can get much better than that. Host thank you. Im flattered. Guest the easy answer is that the jury is still out on how its going to go. What i tried to convey in the book was first the senate has declined over long period of time, not a couple of years, more like a couple of decades and the senate has declined in a way, the decline goes like that and then its deepens over the last nine or 10 years. What we are facing now i believe its a very diminished diminished and weakened we didnt senate at precisely the time that we need a strong one. All of a sudden we are facing the possibility, lets say we are the facing the possibility of inexperienced reckless perhaps irresponsible maybe authoritarian president he would want a Strong Senate and we dont have one. So can the senate save itself change from the downward spiral it has been on and then step up to its responsibilities and thats kind of a question. The book is optimistic in certain ways. Ive been criticized by someone who said you are too optimistic. Its optimistic to cos i believe, and we have seen recent evidence of it, thats so many of the senators are disgusted with the institution the way it has been. You have written about this and you know. Its one of the least well kept secret in town. They want to be real senators. They want to be in a senate that functions and you dare not so the chances that they can do something about that are in my mind, the potential is still there. Host i want to get into a lot of questions regarding the senate but let me just go back before we get there and talk a little bit about you. We got to know each other long ago. He served six senators which may be a record from 75 to 87, 12 years. Tell me a little bit about what that was like and compare if you will be experienced for the last 12 years. A great question. The audience wouldnt know but we have the privilege of meeting and becoming friends in the late 70s when we were both staffers in what i call the last great senate in my first book. We were privileged to be there because the senate was there. I got hooked on the senate early like many people do. In high school and college as i was starting to think about politics and the world, the senate was playing such an Important Role in civil rights. I remember the Civil Rights Act breaking the filibuster and i got to college and exposing the follies of vietnam. Gene mccarthy and Robert Kennedy stepping forward to run for president and of course watergate. I got hooked on the senate and i i had a Senate Internship in 1969, one day after college. It convinced me that i have ought to try to come back and work for the senate and i got back in 75. I had a great time for 12 years doing different things. The senate at that time, which i have called the last great senate, lets throw that out. Mike mansfield set the tone for that senate, the longestserving majority leader. He built the senate in my view premised on trust, mutual respect, good faith and i would say bipartisanship. It was a healthy place and i found that to be the case while i was working in the majority in the 70s and it carried over into the 80s even though we lost majority control of the senate. So i loved what i was doing and i think everyone there loved what they were doing. It was a great place. Its no accident that people we know now were running around like Madeline Albright or Stephen Stephen breyer or Lamar Alexander or susan collins. So i cant even begin to fathom what it would be like now. All these bright people who want to work in the senate, come to the senate. They are still always very busy. They do good work. Sometimes they pass things in committee and then the leader, the leaders says we are not doing that. Its not part of our partisan agenda. I want to hear your views on this because you have thought about so much but evolution of the leader driven senate and the loss of a balance between the leaders and the committees i think is a very important problem. Host i dont think the relationship factor is nearly what it was when we were there as staff members. Relationships were built across the aisle, friendships and social opportunities to engage i think is really deteriorated over the years and that has been pervasive even at the staff level. Thats a very troubling aspect of what has crossed into our experience today. He mentioned in your first book the last great senate got rave reviews at my expect this will too but what led you to write a volume two if you will . What led you to write this book, now . Guest the last great senate came out in 2012. Its basically about the senate of the late 70s ending in 1980 but i was persuaded by my publisher at that time to write an epilogue on what happened since then so i wrote an epilogue which describe the decline of the senate. In fact the senate has declined in stages and he keeps declining declining. When i started writing the last great senate i felt more optimism because we were going to have a president ial election and it turned out barack obama would be president and it would give me a new opportunity. By the time i finished the book that had pretty much vanished. So as the situation progressed and things got worse and the book that you wrote crisis point with trent lott i decided to try to finish the history and explain what it happened and the important thing about a tom is i think from my standpoint the decision to write the book when i was quite sure secretary clinton would be president. But i didnt think she could govern unless the senate came and was better and back to more of the senate we remember. I wasnt motivated by donald trump any more than you were motivated by mr. Trumps candidacy when you and trent lott wrote your book. It just seemed the need for the senate to go back in playing its role in what mondale called our national mediator, the place where things got worked out i thought was important to revisit it. Host its somewhat of the refreshing but counterintuitive revelation in your opening pages pages. Guest im sure. Host you know you wrote the entire book without as i recall talking to anyone, without talking to anyone which most writers, myself included, just sort of consume themselves with interviews and discussions and anothers perspective and we take notes and then do some inclusionary writing from that day you chose to do it without the input of anybody but your own review of the current published information. Tell me what motivated you to use that approach . Its intriguing and the way you describe it sounds more than counterintuitive. It sounds somewhat arrogant but actually my first book which was historical, i actually did about 90 interviews but essentially wrote the book from the public record, newspapers, looks etc. It was mostly written on the public record. This was a different situation and i had done some of the research because i had thought about the first book but i knew i couldnt interview enough people. Im not a journalist and i knew i couldnt interview enough people to have a meaningful sample. I was the senate insider once but im not anymore. I havent been for a long time. I know very few of the senators and very few of the staff and i didnt want to just interview the ones i knew. I basically decided there had been a lot written about the senate. There are some great journalism going on all the time. So i take responsibility for everything in the book but i didnt think interviews were the right way to go. I have to commend you. It has inspired me to try to do something similar some day. I think its worked out very well. Its really two books that you have written, two books in one. The first one takes us through the decades up until 2016 in a very eloquently written Senate History like you did in your first book but this obviously has no information. I want to talk a little bit about some of the things you write about in your first book. The second book of horses a review of the first six or seven months of the Trump Administration 2017. How was it you decide organize the book in that fashion . Guest well i thought the trump election i think was the most astonishing political event in history and in a sense the book i was writing which describe the importance of the senate and the decline of the senate and the dangerous decline of the senate intersected with trumps election. So the question of whether the senate has these new challenges seems to me to be very important. I sensibly decided i would write the second part showing the initial encounters and ran through about seven or eight months, maybe even nine simply because while it wouldnt be conclusive it would be important, the things you could see about it. And i think it worked out that way and thats part of the reason the jury was fixed on the question. I could find evidence of the senators in the senate doing things that are hopeful and promising and i find other evidence where so mixed picture that didnt seem to me, given the times you couldnt ignore the fact that i was writing a book while donald trump was becoming president. But trump wasnt my main focus. Host on page 16 u. Quote the famous football coach vince lombardi. Winning isnt everything, its the only thing. How is it that philosophy is currently reflected in the way the senate operates . Well, i think its a very interesting question. Senator mcconnell has given his view. He says winners make policies and losers go home. The problem is from my standpoint that in our system the winners and the losers stay around, that is the majority in the minority stay around that may have to Work Together. Traditionally they have to Work Together and thats because we are not a parliamentary system. So traditionally when the senate worked well it was because the majority and the minority could come together on things to build enough broad support. So the idea that winning is everything and losers ought to go home, the minority is still there so thats one part of it. But the other part of it is although politics is a contact sport and theres a great deal at stake winning isnt everything. You have to sort of win in a way that theyd change the institutions, maintains our government and i think that is what is the danger that the moment. Host the context i think and im sure you would agree, if not to have a broader definition definition. Context as we look at the political elements of it is one thing but context of winning in terms of moving the country forward, moving toward the American People is a totally different one. Think when you draw for the mindset to winning with the party seems to me that is whats driving so much of the environment today. Absolutely but i think the evolution of course is going toward a more tribal politics over law period of time. Theres no question that is the case but part of this is that you can differ with people. I will accept the view of a little left of center. But politics is supposed to be about finding a way to overcome some of those differences through extended discussion and a real legislative process through sensible compromise. It wasnt supposed to be about one Party Winning on their all in. As you know the times in history when one party on your own very few, maybe 1933 and 1934 in the depression, lbj, 64, 65 and even lbj reached out to republicans and had republicans support the first two years. When Mitch Mcconnell we have will probably come backs him a couple of times. When senator mcconnell started doing health care and trying to get 50 of his 52 votes from his caucus my reaction was well that shouldnt work and couldnt work and its supposed to be that way. Were supposed to be looking at people on the other side to get 60 to 70 votes in course you would say that would be impossible because none of them were vote for us against drop ephedra. But this notion one party has to rule by themselves has taken us to some bad places. We have moved from Common Ground to stand your ground. We have moved from the view that compromise is a good thing to compromises capitulation and that mindset is dangerous. Early in the book to that point an observation that i think is really the essence of the book the state america is Strong Enough to survive a few bad years but the senate has been in decline now for several decades. What are the implications of that that we have been in decline as long . Guest well there are profound implications if its not reversed and i think frankly no one captured them better than you and trent lott in crisis point. When the system isnt working and what the consequences were that are. In our system the senate i believe plays a key role as the balance wheel of the system. While term mondales phrase placed in when our diversity come together and hopefully get reconciled. If you dont have that then the system seizes up. Olers agent becomes dysfunctional and thats what we have seen an thats extremely dangerous for solving any problems but it also was terribly harmful for public confidence. People dont have any faith in the government and why should they basically have faith in the government . You were a very good leader for reasons i wont get into when i talk about leaders. Lets take as an assumption that we are diverse country and its pretty tough out there in terms of partisan differences but you can be a leader who tries to overcome those differences and bring people together or you can be a leader who exacerbates those differences and drives partisanship and polarization. We have seen out leadership rather than the leadership that brings people together. Host let me ask you, utah is i would and as i have and continue to do very finally of the 60s and the extraordinary achievements of what you describe as the golden era of the senate. I looked back just to make sure i remembered correctly but president johnson won in 1964 in a landslide. You had tumultuous crises, the civil rights in the vietnam issues. We had the assassination of three National Leaders in a short period of time in the 60s so you have the combination of an overwhelmingly Democratic Senate, 60 senators and a president who had been given clearly a mandate in an overwhelming landslide election laws that plus the catalytic factors that come with crises. And i compared that to the set of circumstances, that landscape in the 60s to today where we have had three wave elections, parties changing control. We have had a constitutional crisis really with the selection of the president 43. We have had enormous turbulence politically. How difficult is it and is it unfair to compare circumstances today with the golden era given how different the landscape was then versus now . Guest well, look at a certain level everything is different but the golden era, lbjs lbjs victory and the majorities he had, some of that didnt last very long and when i praise the socalled great senator the Mansfield Senate its because they sustained a certain way of doing business throughout the 60s and 70s which were difficult years and the Democratic Senate for a long time dealing with lbj but then of course dealing with richard nixon, dealing with gerald ford and the outsider president who is a democrat, jimmy carter. There were plenty of problems as you know throughout that whole period and yet the senate kept contributing creative legislation, reconciling differences, stepping up domestic and foreignpolicy crises and stepping up the biggest crises of our time, vietnam and watergate after the civil rights legislation. So those were big problems. To some extent and you fastforward a ways and you see a big problems also but many of them not being faced or not being handled by the senate. And so you couldnt have a larger problem than the economic crisis that happened after the lean in shot in 2008 and the collapse on main street across the country. In 2008, the end of 2008 the senate played a commendable role in producing the tarp program when it was needed. Senator mcconnell played a key role in that. It was the way leaders ought to be. Three months later we had barack obama as president. We lost 750,000 the first year going into depression between no longer had any coif ration to deal with the problem. The president had changed so they are or where the republican response had changed. That wouldnt have happened in Mansfield Senate. It would not have happened with howard baker there and wouldnt have happened with rob dolbear. It wouldnt have happened. Host that leads me to ask a question. You explore in your book and i think its so important, an important observation. You talk about the commitment to make the senate work in that period of time and you just alluded to it. For now its the difference between a collective agenda and a visual agenda. Talk about that distinction and why that distinction is so important. Guest mansfield who relocked and we became Senate Majority leader at John Kennedys request had a few of how you should do business and reaction to Lyndon Johnson who didnt believe in bullying people and you and trent lott said never twisted an arm in his life. He believed that all the senators had to contribute, not just the leaders and he believed in treating everyone well. He lived by the golden rule and Edward Derksen when he first heard whats mansfield was trying to do these that it couldnt possibly work in the senate. And yet it did work but it worked when the senate responded to the crisis of civil rights and president kennedys assassination. And move ahead that way. Part of what mansfield and still than the other senators felt the ones that we knew is a representative their states vigorously either democrats or publicans but they had an overriding national commitment. John mccains view country first. They were there for the National Interest but that also meant that lance field insisted on individual agendas. We had our individual agendas that we are here to make the senate work. You have to subordinate the individual agendas for the ne